


Dead Languages

by TinyFakeFanficRock



Series: Ad meliora [7]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Choking, Crucifixion, Domestic Violence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/referenced underage rape, Slavery, Tribal Courier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 15:53:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9392315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinyFakeFanficRock/pseuds/TinyFakeFanficRock
Summary: The questions are innocent.  The answers are not.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Fallout Kink Meme.

Mel leaned against the side of Mick and Ralph's shop, scanning the street for a curiously absent Dixon. She idly nibbled some gecko jerky, less from hunger and more from a desire to smell something other than Bill Ronte's lingering whiskey breath.

Max and Stacey darted around the corner and made a beeline for her as soon as they spotted her. "Hey, lady! Whatcha doin'? You usually don't stand still this long."

"Waiting for Dixon. I need to talk to him."

"What are you buying?" Max asked with the disinterest of someone who has seen more drug deals than hot meals.

"I'm not buying anything."

"Then he's not gonna wanna talk to you."

"Heh. We'll see about that."

"Can I have some of that?" asked Stacey, pointing to the jerky. She gave them both a few pieces -- and the bottles of water they were probably going to need after they'd eaten it. "Civilized" folk had trouble with anything properly spiced.

Mid-mouthful, Max said, "Hey, Rotface says you're a tribal. Is that true?"

The subject change got her guard up. The children's curiosity was surely innocent, but Rotface must be around somewhere, and everything he heard was for sale. "Yes, I am."

"Wow, cool! Do you speak Tribalese?"

She'd had conversations like this many times before, but these questions were much more endearing coming from children. Furthermore, their ignorance kept them from asking more sensitive questions, like _what tribe_ and _where's that_ and _why'd you leave_. "There's no such thing. Different tribes have different languages."

"Huh. How many people speak yours?"

Hadn't she _just_ thought the children didn't know enough to ask her anything sensitive?

\---

Raven -- whatever she'd had to answer to for the last three years, in her own head she could still be Raven -- was uneasy. Upon his return from his duties, her husband had not vanished into his study for an hour as usual; instead, he sat down on the sofa, stretched his legs out in front of him, and watched her finish preparing dinner with an almost indulgent air. That meant he was in an unusually good mood, which was almost as bad a sign as if he'd stayed in the study for three hours.

She finally learned why after dinner, when he told her blithely, "The Legate's other girl died last night."

She said nothing; he'd have to try harder than that to get a reaction from her. Though it did hurt her to hear that her oldest friend was dead, she'd been expecting this. She and Bee had grown up on the trails together, and though Raven had initially resented the time Bee spent romancing Aloe, another Ironwood girl, their friendship had survived. It hadn't hurt that Aloe was the sweetest, most gentle person she'd ever met. Raven had even been a little relieved when the Legate bought both Bee and Aloe at the auction; it meant they'd be able to stay together.

Staying together, though, meant they had to see each other suffer. Even Raven's husband, himself well-versed in depravity, said with great admiration that he had much to learn from the Legate. He'd brought her along to the Legate's house several times, where she knelt beside a strange half-metal dog, fixed her eyes on the floor, and tried vainly to ignore everything that happened around her. It was a good night if her husband and the Legate merely laughed about their terrible deeds and planned more. Otherwise, Bee and Aloe were summoned to suffer for the men's amusement; they particularly enjoyed forcing the girls to hurt each other. There were more bad nights than good.

After Aloe finally died last month, it was no surprise that Bee stopped eating. Raven was sure that Bee, rebellious from childhood, had only complied with their masters this long so that Aloe wouldn't be alone. Now there was nothing to hold her here, certainly not Raven, who did nothing but sit still and silent for hours during her friends' torment.

Raven, who was more afraid of dying than of anything the Legion did. She'd thought it would take more than that cowardice to be one of the last Ironwoods, possibly _the_ last one -- some of the younger children might have survived the sweating sickness, but everyone she'd known was now dead.

Apparently unsatisfied with her lack of reaction, he pressed on. "There was something interesting, though. Before she died, she kept repeating 'Tay tah-choo a-low'."

His pronunciation of _te tacu_ was grotesque, but intelligible. _I love you, Aloe_. Of course. Now she knew why he'd been so happy; he'd found a way to take this death she'd been steeling herself for and imbue it with fresh heartache.

He continued, "Since you have _such an interest_ in languages, I thought I'd ask you if you could translate."

They didn't deserve to know Bee had spent her last breaths crying to the woman they'd taken from her. Well aware of the consequences for lying to him, Raven chose anyway to tell him the significance of his request instead. "It means you are very cruel."

It was the only time she ever successfully lied to him, probably because she was still telling the truth.

\---

And now she lied again, grateful for children's credulity: "Hard to say. Most of us live in cities now, and speak whatever everyone else does. Maybe some people still remember."

"Do you know all the tribal languages?"

Mel forced a chuckle. "There's way too many for that, silly." 

"Well, do you know _any_ of the other ones?"


	2. Chapter 2

She'd been just a few weeks past eighteen: Young, stupid, and somehow still hopeful. Raven was on her own most of the time; her husband was busy with his ... contubernium, that was the word. Her chores could be dispatched in only a few hours, but she was forbidden from leaving the Pre-War university dormitory that housed minor officers and their slaves. So she spent most of her time in one of the common rooms, practicing her Latin with the other slaves, often by gossiping about their owners.

She befriended a centurion's elderly housekeeper called Paeta, who told her after a few days that she came from the same tribe as Raven's husband, a band from up in the Utah called the Kanabites. Paeta hadn't really known him; they'd been a large tribe, and he'd only been a boy when the Legion came. Still, it was new information about him, so Raven was grateful.

Mulling it over that night, she wondered whether speaking to him in his own language would let her reach the man under the Legion indoctrination. Perhaps being reminded of the old ways could bring him back from the savagery he'd been taught.

Over the next few days, she wheedled several Kanabite phrases out of Paeta and assiduously rehearsed their strangely gutteral pronunciations. The next night, just after she'd put away the last of the dinner dishes, she asked her husband, in his mother tongue, how old he'd been when the Legion came, hoping to stir up some longing for his childhood.

She stirred something in him, all right, but it was _not_ nostalgia. He stood stone-still for a long moment, then wheeled on her with a wild look in his eyes; before she could react, she was sprawled on the floor with blood in her mouth and him looming over her.

"Do not ever speak that tongue again, woman," he thundered. "What possessed you to use it?"

She had never seen him show this much emotion, and her terror of his sudden rage froze her.

He kicked her in the side. "Answer me."

"I --" she didn't dare tell him she'd entertained thoughts of reforming him -- "I thought you would appreciate hearing your own language."

"Latin is my language. That garbage was the inchoate howling of rabid dogs and should be forgotten. Who was fool enough to teach it to you?"

She had to tell him something, but the truth would kill Paeta. She blurted the name of another slave who had died in childbirth the previous week. He couldn't kill someone who was already dead.

He kicked her again, harder, and she felt something crack. "You're lying. Who was it?"

"It was Helva, I swear."

He dragged her to her feet, pinned her against the wall, and pressed his thumb into her windpipe until she saw spots. "If you use your next breath to lie to me again, it will be your last." He relaxed his grip enough to let her speak, but still kept his hand at her neck and his face barely an inch from her own, his breath hot and coming fast.

"I don't want you to harm them," she whispered hoarsely, earning herself a renewed pressure on her throat.

"I don't care what you want. Tell me now, and I will make their death swift. If I have to find out for myself -- and I will, -- they will take a week to die and I will bring you to watch so that they know why they are suffering. And only then will I kill you."

She'd seen enough by then to know it was no idle threat, and capitulated. "Paeta."

"I should have slit her throat years ago," he muttered, shoving Raven back to the floor, where she watched him collect his machete and stride out the door. She lay there long after he'd left, the pain in her ribs keeping her unmoving and her breath shallow, but she was still alive, only older, wiser, and far more pessimistic.

\---

Mel shook her head. "I did learn a few words from another tribe's language, years back, but ... I don't remember them anymore."

"Well, then say something in your language!" demanded Stacey.

"When was the last time you got to talk to somebody else in your language?" asked Max at the same time.


	3. Chapter 3

The slavemaster handed her lead rope over to her new owner, a man wearing one of the black-feathered helmets. His face was almost entirely covered by goggles and a red wrap; she could tell only that he was about a hand's width taller than her, with a lean build and pale skin.

He led her southeast through a Pre-War cemetery that now hosted a forest of crosses. She raised her bound hands to her face, but it did nothing to block the stench of blood and shit and death all around them. Raven stared at the ground, afraid of seeing familiar faces -- one in particular. When they had arrived in Flagstaff, the Ironwood boys over ten had been given a choice: become Legion soldiers or die. Her beloved, Kit, had pushed forward to be the first to say, "Kill me."

Her owner stopped and tied the rope around the base of the nearest cross. "A moment, my bride," he said, and walked away.

The cross's occupant moaned in agony. Despite her earlier resolve, Raven looked up and found herself staring into Kit's brown eyes, gone glassy with pain. She pressed her cheek against his calf, hoping this pathetic comfort brought him even a little solace.

"Te tacu," she told him, using their native language to gain a scrap of privacy. "The girls didn't get a choice," she added, wanting Kit to know she had not betrayed him, had not willingly accepted this man.

Somehow he managed to speak. "I'm sorry." How could he say that when he was the one dying? 

"Kit, no, _I'm_ sorry."

"Love you," he croaked.

Before she could say anything more, she felt a hand heavy on her shoulder. "You women are all alike. We haven't even been joined yet and already your eyes are wandering. Did you know this boy?" Something in the way he said it told her he already knew the answer, had brought her here deliberately to see Kit's suffering.

Best to be honest, then. "I had hoped to marry him," she answered in English, saying it loud enough for Kit to hear. She could at least give him that.

Her owner considered this for a moment, then picked up a heavy hammer lying at the foot of the cross and broke both Kit's legs with it. "He'll die faster this way," he told her, untying her and leading her away from Kit's whimpers. "Consider this mercy a wedding gift."

\---

"Was muy hekï hu," she'd ended up saying, to herself more than the kids. _It was a very long time ago._


End file.
